Thursday, June 30, 2011

No Grainiess Of Space So Far

Dr Laurent and colleagues searched for differences in the polarisation at different energies, but found none to the accuracy limits of the data. Some theories suggest that the quantum nature of space should manifest itself at the ‘Planck scale’: the minuscule 10-35 of a metre, where a millimetre is 10-3 m. However, Integral’s observations are about 10 000 times more accurate than any previous and show that any quantum graininess must be at a level of 10-48 m or smaller.

“This is a very important result in fundamental physics and will rule out some string theories and quantum loop gravity theories,” says Dr Laurent.

Looks like this scale is even smaller than the Planck length scale. Hum...